Scrapbooking

A while back my Aunt was in town to scrapbook with my sister. I went out to my sister's house to do my first real scrapping session. On the way I took a few pictures of the scenery, because it is relaxing to drive through the country.

Driving through the farmland.

Close up of the corn.

A farm.

I thought it was neat that this country road had flags on the poles.

I love driving down tree lined roads.

I've done a few pages here and there to add to scrapbooks given to me, but never a full on session with more paper, stickers, embellishments, and tools than I know what to do with. I regret not taking a picture of the full spread of scrapbooking stuff, but I was still slightly sick then and not thinking. My Aunt gave me a small dog themed scrapbook with some doggie themed paper. Anyway, here are the pages that I got done that day:

 

 

As for other parts of my life... I've been feeling creative/crafty/DIYish recently, so I've made a couple of things that I've seen on Pinterest. I'll be sharing those projects in posts to come. Also, I'm back on track with eating and even lost two pounds. I have so much to blog about, but have put it on the back seat to try to catch up and work ahead on stuff for grad school. I hope to be getting more posts up soon on everything that I've been working on. 

Easter 2013

I know, an actual real post. It is finally spring break at work, so I'm not panicking about getting ready for the week right now. I plan on having a very productive break with lots of homework for grad school, some concert prep for work, and getting a few things done around the house.

My family had Easter dinner yesterday, so today doesn't feel much like Easter to me. The warm weather is nice and I took the dog for a walk and then went back out on a second walk just for myself. I hope that the warmer weather is here to stay!

For Easter I didn't take a bunch of pictures like I usually do, but just focused on having a good time. My mom made a ton of food with the main dish being chicken stir fry. I also had some salad, cheesy noodles, potatoes, and a roll. For dessert I had some homemade apple pie and these very addictive cookies that my sister made. My niece loved looking for eggs and I do regret not having pictures of that. She is so cute! I had some small Easter presents for my family and they did for me as well. Here is a picture of all the gifts I got:

My mom gave me the tank tops and glasses case. My sister gave me the candy, cookies, and lip gloss. My aunt gave me the cool pot with a flower from her garden that I can later put in my garden.

In the evening, the hubs and I had some of friends over. Two of them are from out of town, so it was nice to get a chance to see them. There ended up being five of us total and we went to Don Pablo's for dinner. The hubs and I split an order of chicken fajitas and I filled up on salsa and chips. I love salsa and probably would've been happy with just eating that for dinner. The rest of the evening was spent at our house catching up. I ended up wimping out a little after nine. The sleep schedule of a teacher!

I hope to get some posts up later this week about the workout I've been doing at the gym and my goals for the rest of this school year as related to weight loss. I figure spring break is a good time to take some time for blogging.

Christmas 2012

I'm starting to feel the Christmas spirit a little bit more since there are now festivities going on. I spent the weekend before Christmas and Christmas Eve mostly cleaning and organizing the house. The house is clean, but I had to stop organizing just to get it clean in time for the holidays. On Christmas Eve I went to a restaurant called Tiebel's (it is a nicer restaurant where lots of gatherings are at) with my hubby and FIL. We all ended up getting the all-you-can-eat chicken. The whole meal included potato soup, salad, rolls (their rolls are wonderful), mashed potatoes, fried chicken (in which I peeled the skin/breading off but I did steal a few bites of breading), and peppermint ice cream for dessert.

Christmas morning I went to my sister's house for breakfast and opening presents. I got to see my parents, sister, niece, and brother-in-law. My sister made a bunch of goodies and breakfast items. I started off healthy with scrambled eggs, tomatoes, and cheese on a wheat tortilla. Then I went for the sweets.

After breakfast we opened our presents. My niece is three, so she is at the right age to be really into opening presents. She had a very Tinkerbell Christmas, but also got some Barbie stuff and a wooden rocking horse. As for my presents, I got some Bath and Body Works stuff from my sister, a license plate frame from my dad, and a Nook tablet from my parents.

My sister and niece checking out the Tinkerbell doll set.

My mom and dad opening presents.

My dad's present to me.

My parent's present to me.

My sister's present to me (and the stuff in the next picture too).



 

My aunt gave me some music books (pictured above) and made me a little scrapbook of pictures from the concerts we have gone to together.

My birthday present from my sister. I also got it on Christmas since my birthday is at the end of November and we haven't seen each other since then.

I went back home to have lunch with the hubs and FIL. My hubby cooked us a wonderful dinner of a turkey breast, green beans, stuffing, and acorn squash. Unfortunately I was starting to feel ill at this time and wasn't very hungry, but I do have plenty of healthy leftovers.

After lunch we opened gifts starting with the doggies. They got a bunch of those flat, stuffing-free dog toys. They went nuts playing with them. Sebastion grabbed a few, went in the kitchen, and played by himself.

Lilly had fun shredding the paper off of the gifts.

Benjamin went into toy hoarding mode.

I got my hubby the Sonic Racing game for the WiiU, a Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVD set, some history DVD's, some work pants, a calendar featuring our dogs as the pictures, and a bunch of snacks in his stocking.

As for my gifts, I got a new computer monitor from my FIL to help out with grad school.

My hubby got me a food steamer, a Final Fantasy music game for the 3DS, two necklaces, and my stocking had one item- a wool scarf (very soft and he got it at a good price!).

I also got some hand made ornaments in the mail from a family member that lives in Georgia.

For dinner we went to BC Osaka's and tried their buffet. The buffet was huge with many choices and you could also have something grilled up with your choice of ingredients. I had mostly chicken with broccoli, fried rice, some green beans, and ice cream for dessert. A very unconventional meal for Christmas Day, but it was a good one.

The day after Christmas we got to spent with friends. Two of them are from out of town and we don't get to see as often, so it was good to see them. We went to Abuelo's for lunch and the hubby and I split an order of chicken fajitas.

Hey, it is my always sideways picture. Gotta take a new one sometime!

After that we came back to the house to talk and play some video games. Later that evening one of my hubby's friends (that was with us earlier that day for lunch), decided to surprise my hubby with his Christmas present. When the hubs and FIL went out for dinner, he came back and we assembled his Christmas present of a new office chair. His friend left and I acted like nothing happened to see how long it would take the hubs to notice his new chair. Unfortunately, he noticed it right away! Not as surprising as we thought.

Thanksgiving and Graduate School

I know that I've been a bad blogger since I haven't updated in a while. I've had a lot of stuff come up this week that has kept me busy. It is all good news, but no good news on the weight loss front as of now. Sometimes I eat healthy, sometimes I don't, and it shows on the scale. I really do need to focus in December, so I can lose a little bit of weight by the new year.

Monday I did some cooking and baking for the week since I took the day off. The real reason why is in the next paragraph... Anyway, here is an easy recipe.

First cook up some ground turkey, chicken, or lean beef (which is what I used this time).

Then preheat the oven to the time on the crescent roll container. While your meat is cooking and your oven is preheating, take some reduced fat crescent rolls and shape them into a muffin pan. I used two packages of rolls and only had two leftover.

When the meat is cooked, add some barbecue sauce to your liking.

Lastly add meat to the crescent rolls and top with a little bit of cheese. Bake them for the time on the crescent roll package. They come out looking like this.

I also made some chocolate cupcakes with just cake mix and pumpkin.

Monday the 19th was a big day for me. I know I haven't written about it in a while, but I have been in the process of trying to get into graduate school. Monday was a group interview with some of the faculty. There wasn't much of a way to prepare, so I was super nervous. They started off the interview with a little bit of information on the program. Then most of the hour and a half was spent on questioning the nine of us. A couple of questions I was prepared for such as "Tell us about why you want to be in this program." and "Tell us about a situation where you had to deal with diversity and what you did in this situation." Then there were questions that I wasn't prepared for such as "Give us one word that you would like us to remember you by and then explain why in one sentence." and "Tell us why someone else in the room would make a good therapist in one sentence." We were told that we would find out in about a week if we made it in or not. After going through everything a week felt like forever to wait!

I took this picture in the parking lot before the interview. I really don't think that most people want to trespass in a marshy, wooded area.

Tuesday and Wednesday were normal work days for me. I unintentionally kept wearing stripes even though the stripes challenge ended last Friday!

I wore this outfit for the interview (and pajamas the rest of the day) on Monday and for work on Tuesday.

I wore this striped dress, sweater, leggings, and boots on Wednesday.

Tuesday I got an exciting e-mail:

I consider that close enough to being a grad student and a part of Purdue, so I got myself a sale sweatshirt on black Friday:

We had a two hour fog delay on Wednesday morning. I was kinda worried that I would have to drive in the horrible fog, because I work in a school in the city that usually doesn't call off for fog. The school in my rural hometown called off school for the whole day! Here are a couple of pics of the fog from my house:

On Wednesday I got my birthday present from the hubs. He asked if I wanted to wait until my birthday next week or get it now since I had a four day weekend and some time to try it out. I went with lets try it out now. :)  He ordered a Wii U (the new Nintendo system) and we got it on Monday. It came with a game called Nintendoland which looks like it would be fun to play with friends. My present was Sing Party which is singing game. You can practice singing by yourself or play with a group of people (that is really what the game was designed for). There is a wide range of songs from the '60's to today's hits. I found out that I really suck at most of the songs only getting two or three stars out of five. I still can't wait to try it out with my friends though!

Thursday was Thanksgiving, so I had lunch with the hubs and father-in-law at Cracker Barrel. It has been a tradition for us the past five or so years. There is only three of us and it is actually cheaper to eat there than cook the same stuff at home! We all had the Thanksgiving special with our choice of sides and dessert. I had turkey, sweet potatoes, green beans, stuffing, cornbread, and no sugar added pumpkin pie.

For dinner I went to my uncle's house (my dad's brother). I haven't been over there for Thanksgiving for two years, so I thought it would be nice to go there and see some relatives I haven't seen for a while. I didn't take a picture of my meal, but I had turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, carrots, and shared a piece of pecan pie with the hubs.

The rest of the exciting stuff from this week will be in the next post.

My Niece's Birthday Party

I know it has been a while, but I've been busy with work and am now at home sick. :( I thought this might be a good time to write a post or two to catch up on what has been going on recently.

On Saturday of last weekend I met up with a retired teacher friend of mine for some lunch. We actually both ended up eating breakfast, but it was really good. I had a veggie omelet which I forgot to take a picture of as usual. We haven't gotten to see much of each other since early last summer. We kept planning on doing stuff and it always fell through. I was really happy to be able to do something with her though even if it was just a meal on a rainy day.

Last Saturday was also my niece's (JJ) 3rd birthday party. My sister and brother-in-law moved into a new house about a week before the party, so they were pretty brave to get unpacked and have a party in the same week. The party turned out very well and their new house is nice. I was also looking forward to seeing my aunt that goes to the concerts with me, but she was sick and unable to attend.

My sister made a pretty cake for a girly three year old:

Look at how thick that cake was!

 

There was also more than enough food which I didn't get a picture of again. There was taco salad, lasagna, cheesy mashed potatoes, meatballs, rolls, and macaroni and cheese. I was really good that day and just had a little bit of lasagna, potatoes, and a piece of cake.

The fun part of any little kid's birthday is watching them blow out candles, eat cake, and open presents. I didn't get a super good picture of JJ with the cake, but I got a ton of pictures of her opening presents.

Opening up my present which was a ton of princess play stuff.

And some hangers for her new closet.

Showing off her new winter boots from me to great grandma.

Playing with some princess jewelry.

My mom gave her this stuffed animal cow with a pink tutu. How cute is that?

The one good picture I got of her with the cake.

I stayed until after 6:00 which I didn't intend on doing, but I was visiting and it just happened. Needless to say, I didn't get much done on Saturday. At least I did follow through with my goal of not overindulging while at the birthday party.